


The Lie

by damndonnergirls



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, Best Friends, Comedy, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friendship, Gyms, M/M, Male Friendship, Romantic Comedy, Romantic Friendship, Sexual Confusion, background breevy, background fresh, background jorius, bristhale, bristhale friendship, hawthom, thale, thale friendship, thalestel, thalestel friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 06:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6411868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damndonnergirls/pseuds/damndonnergirls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Best friends pretend to be boyfriends after they're mistakenly given a couples discount at the gym. Question is, who's pretending?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from [Tumblr](http://damndonnergirls.tumblr.com/post/141591010367/the-lie). First published on March 23, 2016. Minor edits throughout. Dedicated to **jennycaakes (@madgesundersee)** and inspired by a post that I can't find anymore for the life of me.

In retrospect, this never would have happened if he hadn’t been so damned cheap.

“ _Eighty dollars_?” Gale didn’t mean to shout, but he was tired and cranky and he did _not_ have eighty dollars to spend every month on a fucking gym membership. “But I was specifically told it was only sixty!”

His best friend Thom gave him a reproachful look and made a little clicking noise with his tongue. “Calm down, Gale.” He turned back to the receptionist—a pale, freckled girl with bright red hair, with a name tag that said Jacqueline—and gave her an embarrassed smile. “Sorry about that. It’s just that our friend and his girlfriend signed up here the other day, and he told us it would only be sixty.”

Jacqueline frowned for a moment, then realization dawned on her face. “ _Oh_. Well, we do have discounted rates, but—”

“But what?” Gale said angrily.

Jacqueline looked at Thom, then Gale, then back again. “Well, um, I didn’t realize you would be interested—”

“Damn straight we’re interested,” Gale interrupted her.

Jacqueline looked at him strangely. “There's no need for that, sir. I’ll sign you up right away.”

“See, was that so hard?” Thom said to Gale, after they had filled out the forms. “You don’t have to lose your temper all the time.”

Gale scowled. “Well, _you_ don’t have to be so damned polite. And we don’t have to go to this gym, anyway. There are cheaper ones.”

“Those gyms don’t have smoothies,” Thom said firmly. “We’re going with this one.”

Jacqueline collected their forms with a smile.

It wasn’t until later, when they were back at their shared apartment, that they took a closer look at the paperwork. “Oh god,” Thom said slowly. “There’s been a mistake.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

Thom pushed the receipt across the table to Gale. On that slip of paper were the words _couples discount_. “They think… they think…”

Gale felt the blood drain from his face. “They think we’re gay.”

 

**.**  
**ooo**  
**.**

 

Bristel lost his shit.

“Oh my god,” he gasped. Actual tears were streaming down his face. “Oh my _god_.”

“This is all your fault, you dick,” Gale groused. “You didn’t tell us you and Leevy got the couples discount!”

Bristel sank down onto the floor and curled up into a fetal position. “I had no idea! Leeves did all the talking, I just sat there and played Pokemon.”

Thom had his head in his hands. “What do we do now?”

“What else?” Gale said. “We go back there and fix it.”

“And lose the discount?”

Bristel choked back a guffaw. “I bet you can get away with it,” he gurgled. “It’s not like they check.”

“But now that girl thinks we’re gay!” Gale protested.

Bristel took a deep breath to compose himself. “Odds are, you’re only going to see that girl at the gym anyway.”

“Good point.” Thom groaned. “If anything, asking her to fix it would be even _more_ embarrassing.”

Gale stared at his best friend in disbelief. “So we’re doing this?” he demanded. “We’re seriously pretending to be gay?”

“We don’t have to _do_ much of anything,” Thom reasoned. “There’s not a lot of couple-y stuff you can do at the gym.”

Bristel started cry-laughing again. “Pornhub would beg to disagree. Ow!” he yelped as Gale kicked him where he lay on a heap on the floor.

“If you say anything about this to anyone…” Gale let the implied threat dangle in the air menacingly.

“I won’t,” Bristel promised. “Oh god. This is the best day of my life.” He sniffed. “My two best friends pretending to be gay for each other. What more could a guy want?”

 

**.**  
**ooo**  
**.**

 

Bristel was right; it wasn’t as if anyone was checking. The only one who actually _thought_ Gale and Thom were a couple was Jacqueline. She really, wholeheartedly believed it. She was always gushing about how great Gale and Thom looked together, and how lucky they were to have found a partner who balanced them out perfectly.

It was awkward. But they got used to it, eventually.

Still, sometimes it got a little weird. Sometimes, when they were lifting weights and spotting each other, it would remind Gale of Bristel’s Pornhub joke. And once he got _that_  stuck in his head, he would end up distracted and irritable and not really in the right mindset to be doing bench presses while his best friend hovered over him.

Gale couldn’t be gay. If there was one thing he knew to be true, it was that he was very, _very_ good with the ladies. He’d never been rejected in his life. Well, not unless you counted that small matter of Katniss back in high school. And Madge shortly after that.

Oh, _god_. Madge.

_“Come on, Undersee,” he said, the one time he tried to kiss her at a house party. “You’ve been coming on to me all night.”_

_The look she gave him could have frozen lava. “I was just trying to reach out.” She thrust her chin toward Katniss and Peeta cuddling on the couch. “It’s not easy, losing the girl you love to someone else.”_

_Gale scowled. “I don’t need your pity.”_

_“Get over yourself, Hawthorne. I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about_ me _.”_

_It took him a couple of seconds to register what she meant. “You’re gay?” he sputtered. “Are you gay gay, or just gay for Katniss?”_

_Madge had been so indignant, she almost couldn’t find the words to speak. “You—you dildo!”_

There was a light touch under his tricep. “You okay?” Thom asked. Looking up at him from this angle, Gale couldn’t help fixating on a tiny scrap of toilet paper on Thom’s chin. He’d cut himself shaving. “You have a few more reps to go.”  
  
“Sorry,” Gale forced himself to say. “I was just thinking of something.”

“Thinking?” Thom’s grey eyes crinkled at the corners. “That’s dangerous.”

“Don’t I know it,” he agreed.

Gale couldn’t _possibly_ be gay—could he?

 

**.**  
**ooo**  
**.**

 

They kept up the charade for months, and they could have kept it up for several more, if they hadn’t seen Jacqueline at a bar one Friday night.

“Don’t look now,” Thom murmured, turning around. “Foxface at twelve o’clock.”

Gale scanned the crowd. “Shit. She’s with Thresh.” Thresh had been a year below them in high school, and his younger sister was friends with Katniss’s sister Prim. He would see through the ruse immediately. “How does she know Thresh?”

Thom glanced over his shoulder. “Oh god, they saw us. What do we do?”

Gale’s mind was racing, and the alcohol in his blood was surging. The girls they’d been chatting up had excused themselves to go to the ladies’ room, so for now they were in the clear. “Look at me,” he commanded. “Talk to me. Laugh like I said something funny.”

“You? Funny?” Thom let out a nervous laugh. “There is a limit to my acting ability.”

Thresh and Jacqueline were making their way toward them. Gale had to act fast. “Do you trust me?”

“’Course I trust you,” Thom said automatically. “What are you—”

What Gale _meant_ to do was something he’d learned in high school, the one time he’d been in a play. He’d been taught to cup a girl’s chin in his hand, carefully position his thumb over the side of her mouth facing away from the audience, and press his lips to his thumb so it would look like they were kissing. At least, that was the theory. None of the girls had ever been interested in faking it.

He managed to get the first part right. He touched Thom’s face lightly, gently, brushing his thumb over the corner of his friend’s mouth. It was so _strange_ , knowing Thom as well as he did, but never knowing until now what Thom’s skin could feel like under his fingertips. _How drunk am I?_ Gale wondered. _What am I doing?_

Thom was a few inches shorter than him. Gale leaned down slightly, his eyelids falling shut more out of habit than necessity.

And that was where things went wrong. If Gale had kept his eyes open, maybe he could have focused better on where his lips were, and where they were going. But he didn’t.

Thom had started in surprise at the contact—not enough for anyone to think he was recoiling from Gale’s touch, but enough to change Gale’s trajectory. So instead of kissing his own thumb, Gale found himself pressing his lips against his friend’s half-open mouth.

Time slowed to a stop. It was exactly like kissing anyone else, exactly like kissing a _girl_ , except it wasn’t. Because he was kissing his best friend. Because he was kissing Thom.

They pulled apart. “What was that?” Thom rasped. His eyes were confused, but heavy-lidded and almost black.

Gale didn’t have a chance to answer, because just then a large hand clamped itself on his shoulder. “Hawthorne!” Thresh boomed. “I can’t believe it. I told Jackie you two were inseparable, sure, but not _that_ inseparable.”

_What have I done?_ This was bound to get back to Katniss. To everyone they had ever known back in their home town. To all the girls Gale had ever been with—all the girls Thom had ever been with. To their families. How was this possibly going to end well for either of them?

Thom was the first to recover. “Believe it,” he replied lightly. “Took me a while, personally. But, I mean, just look at him. He’s beautiful. Who _wouldn’t_ , right?”

Thresh chortled and pulled Jacqueline close. “I’m happy with my foxy.”

Whether Thom was doing it consciously or not, he saw Thresh and Jacqueline’s body language and copied it. “And I’m happy with mine,” Thom responded as he snaked an arm around Gale’s waist.

_There is a limit,_ Thom had said, _to my acting ability._

Was he still acting?

Was Gale?

 

**.**  
**ooo**  
**.**

 

“We should probably talk about it,” Thom said, later when they got home.

“You think?” Gale replied bitterly.

Thom narrowed his eyes. “Hey, you started it.”

“I did.” Gale pulled at the hair on the back of his head. “I panicked. I’m sorry.”

Thom was quiet for a while. Then: “Are you?”

“I don’t know!” He’d never actually thought about it before—not seriously, anyway. He didn’t think he needed to. _Boobs. I like boobs. I like putting the P in the V. How can I be gay?_

Then again, the first person he’d ever fallen for—Katniss—was about as flat-chested as a girl could get. Madge had been nearly a foot taller, but she’d also been skinny. So it wasn’t as if Gale’s physical preferences actually made a difference when it came to the people he loved, or thought he could love.

So who was to say he couldn’t love Thom?

That fateful conversation with Madge rang in his ears. _Are you gay gay, or just gay for Katniss?_ Whatever Gale was feeling right now, could he feel it for another guy? Or was it just for Thom?

Thom was watching him closely. “Even if you weren’t sorry,” he said softly, “can you imagine the uproar back home?”

Gale closed his eyes. _Back home._ Back where his widowed mother was counting on him, counting on her eldest son who’d been the man of the house since he was fourteen. Back where he had two younger brothers looking up to him, taking cues from him, idolizing him.

“Are _you_ sorry?” he asked Thom.

“I’m sorry about all the lying we’ve been doing. At first it didn’t seem like a big deal, but now…” Thom trailed off.

Gale nodded. “So what do we do?”

“I think… I think I need to be alone for a while,” Thom said. “And so do you.”

 

**.**  
**ooo**  
**.**

 

Gale showed up at Bristel and Leevy’s front door. “We had a fight,” he said simply.

Bristel didn’t make any jokes; he didn't ask any questions. He just smiled sadly. “Buddy.”

Gale stayed the night, and he stayed in bed the next day, brooding, not talking to anybody. He wondered where Madge was now. They’d lost touch after high school, and she didn’t exactly think the world of him even before that, but maybe… maybe she would understand what he was going through.

Around five o’clock, Bristel checked up on him. “We’re having Jo and Darius over for dinner,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything, but if you’d like to join us… we’d like that, too.”

_Jo_. Jo would understand. Wouldn’t she?

“Sure,” Gale told Bristel. “I’d like that.”

Dinner was pleasant enough. Bristel and Leevy made a mean paella, and Jo and Darius brought dessert from Mellark’s. There was sangria and laughter and—as cheesy as it was to say it—the easy, warm glow of love. Even Johanna seemed… different, somehow. Her snark was still there, the acid tongue Gale had come to know and expect. But she was… centered, now. Solid. And whenever Darius made her laugh, or trailed his finger up her spine, or rubbed her knee, Gale knew why. Darius balanced her out. He had lightness where Johanna had intensity. Unlike Jo, he wasn’t afraid to show affection, wasn’t afraid to seek intimacy. They were still themselves, but when they were together, they were better.

“He’s good for you,” Gale observed, later when he and Jo had a moment alone. “He can handle you.”

“Handle me? I could beat his pasty ginger ass,” Jo scoffed. Her expression softened. “But, yeah, I guess we’re good together.”

“I thought you liked girls,” he couldn’t help saying.

“I did, and I still do,” Jo said. “I’ve always identified as bi. Pan, more like. But it’s easier to say bi.”

“But you’re with a guy now,” Gale said. “By most people’s standards, that makes you straight.”

Jo snorted. “Do I look like I care about people’s standards? Besides, that’s not how it works. That’s the whole point. You don’t get to choose who you love. You just _do_.”

“You’re using the L-word now, too?”

Jo smirked. “Does it scare you?”

“The only thing you’ve ever said you loved before was pizza.”

Jo laughed. “Trust me, one day you’ll be like me. One day you’ll wake up, look at the boy you’ve woken up next _to_ , and you’ll think… you wouldn’t trade him for all the pizza in the world. And I mean that sincerely.”

Gale looked at her questioningly. _Boy? Him?_ Did Jo mean to say those things? Or was she talking about herself and Darius?

And Jo must have read his mind, because just then she sighed in exasperation. “Thom. I’m talking about Thom, you dildo.”

Gale’s lip curled. “Madge called me a dildo once.”

“Princess Madgey’s one smart cookie.” Jo punched him in the arm. “Now go and tell Thom how you feel.”

“But… everyone back home… my family, they have _expectations_.” Gale faltered. “And I don’t even know if Thom really likes me. He’s my best friend. What if I ruin things between us forever?” 

“No smoke without fire.” Jo gave him a wry smile. “Look, I don’t have all the answers, Gale. You and Thom have to go find them out for yourselves.”

 

**.**  
**ooo**  
**.**

 

“You’re back,” Thom said. He was standing in the kitchen, leaning back against the sink with a can of beer in his hand. He popped the tab up and it cracked open with a satisfying, seductive hiss.

Gale licked his dry lips. “I am.”

“Did Bristel and Leevy ask… ?”

“No. But I think they had an idea.”

Thom nodded wordlessly.

Silence. Gale searched desperately for a way to fill it. “You know, it’s funny how Bristel and Leevy ended up together,” he said. “You took her to prom, and I…”

Thom let out a hollow laugh. “You pretend-married her back in kindergarten.”

“Yeah. And then she pretend-divorced me a few days later.”

“I remember. She was so mad when you let another girl borrow your eraser. Even back then, you were a heartbreaker.”

What did Thom mean by that? “People change,” Gale said. “Look at Bris—he was never serious about anything before Leevy. Look at Jo.”

“Maybe.” Thom tipped his head back and gulped down a mouthful of beer. “You know how my dad first told me about sex?” he asked, changing the subject.

Gale reluctantly tore his gaze away from Thom’s throat. “No, you never said.”

“He said… he said I should touch a girl in all the places her body was different from mine. Because that’s how you learn how you fit together.”

Gale grimaced. “That must’ve been one hell of a talk.”

“It was excruciating. But I’m not going to lie, it made for good technique in the long run.” Thom took another swig of beer. “This shit is fucked up, Gale. I like _girls_. Always have, always will.”

“So do I.”

“But I…” Thom stared at his bare feet for a moment, before he lifted his eyes to meet Gale’s. “I also like you.”

It was as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. Gale opened his mouth and was grateful to find he could still speak. “I like you, too,” he said, his voice raw and honest.

Thom ran a hand through his dark hair nervously. It was a sight Gale had seen hundreds, thousands of times before, but now it was precious to him in a way he couldn’t describe. “What now?”

Gale reached for his hand. Thom was his best friend. He’d always known he couldn’t live without him. That would never change. “We figure it out,” he said. “We take things one step at a time. All I know is, if we fight it… we’re just trading one lie for another.”

He took another step closer, leaning his forehead against Thom’s, feeling the furrow in Thom’s brow relax and smooth under his. “One step at a time,” Thom whispered, his lips coming tantalizingly closer. “I can do that.”

A laugh bubbled up from Gale’s stomach. “Can you imagine how annoying Bris is going to be?”

“I’m almost tempted not to tell him,” Thom murmured. “You _know_ he’s going to do that whole weird dance of his and everything.”

“I can live with that,” Gale said. “If it means I have a chance to keep you.”

The last thing Thom said before they kissed was, “Me, too.”  
 

**~FIN~**


End file.
